HISTORY
When Edward Nigma was a boy, one of his teachers said she would hold a contest to see which of her pupils could solve a particular jigsaw puzzle the fastest [Super duper fucking lame! This isn't educating! This is teaching kids to perform rote tasks as fast as possible! I see through your wily ways, Society's Educational System! Me and Jaden Smith!]. The night before the contest, Nigma secretly took a photograph of the fully assembled puzzle, which he found in the teacher's desk [Did I say somebody else had the dumbest origin ever? Because I think I did. But this one is well on its way to Stupidville.]. Hence, the next day Nigma was easily able to win the contest, since he knew what the puzzle would look like when it was solved [Let me get this straight because my mind is fucking boggling over this horrible moment in The Riddler's life that was so seminal that it had to be recounted here in his Who's Who entry: Edward needed to win a stupid ass school contest so badly that he resorted to cheating. Okay, I get that some kids have low self-esteem and no confidence in themselves, so he was trying to bolster his abilities in front of the teacher and the rest of the class. How does he cheat? He finds the solved puzzle just sitting in the teacher's desk draw. Okay, that's weird but he needs to know what it looks like to be able to solve it quickly. So does he just examine it? No! He needs to take a picture of it! And remember, kids! Digital cameras didn't exist yet! Which means he had a big ass bulky mechanical camera and he took a picture and he went home to his father's darkroom and he developed the pictures and let them dry and then studied the picture to find out exactly what he found out when he looked at the puzzle before he took the picture! Voila! Easy peasy, contest winsies!]. This is the first known example of Nigma's dishonest use of puzzles [Ha ha ha! "Dishonest use of puzzles"? Is there some fucked up law on the Gotham City books about using puzzles inappropriately? I once used a Sudoku to cheat on my taxes.].

Years later, the adult Nigma ran a puzzle booth at a carnival, at which customers would pit their skill against his in solving puzzles [Most boring carnie booth ever. Even more boring than the one where you roll the bowling ball over the hump.]. If the customer solved the puzzle, Nigma would award him money, but if Nigma succeeded in solving the puzzle and the customer did not, the customer would have to pay Nigma money. Nigma always cheated by arranging the puzzles so that he, not the customers, would win [Shocking. Just shocking. He's really on the fast track to Super-Villainy!].

Eventually, Nigma longed to make greater sums of money by dishonest means [Cheating at Scrabble Tournaments?]. He decided to become a thief on a grand scale, and to match wits with the police, and especially with the crimefighting Batman (see Batman II), by sending them clues to his upcoming crimes in the forms of riddles and puzzles [How was that supposed to make him greater sums of money? I think this entry got his dream wrong. What he really wanted was to be beaten by The Batman on a semi-regularly basis while wearing a skin-tight suit without any underwear.]. Thus it was that Edward Nigma began his career as the costumed criminal known as the Riddler.

Over the years the Riddler has become one of The Batman's most persistent, notorious, and crafty adversaries. The Batman has learned that Nigma has developed a conditioned reflex that makes it impossible for him to make an important move in his life without leaving a riddle of some sort to explain it [I think that's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.]. The Riddler tried to force himself to commit a crime without first sending a riddle clue to The Batman or to the police, but his subconscious mind pervented him from carrying the crime out. So the Riddler makes his riddles especially complicated and difficult. Thus he hopes to taunt The Batman by telling him about his future crimes, but in a way he hopes will be too hard for even the world's greatest detective to interpret. Nevertheless, The Batman has continually proved to be equal to the Riddler's challenges, and has always halted his criminal rampages.

POWERS & WEAPONS
The Riddler has no super-powers, but is a criminal strategist of great cunning. He is only a fair hand-to-hand combatant.

The Riddler often uses guns as weapons and is a good marksman. He sometimes employs weaponry disguised as puzzles, such as large jigsaw puzzle pieces that explode and large crossword puzzles that he wraps around opponents to ensnare them [Not particularly clever for a puzzle genius, is he?].